


The Emotion of Art

by Moonrose91



Series: A Collection of WIPs [2]
Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: F/M, First Season, Gen, I have no idea how much it will be, I looked up Taryn's last name that was the name I got, Paul (Scott's Friend) Focused, Sort-of OC focused
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 09:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonrose91/pseuds/Moonrose91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bayville High is a place where the X-kids get to, at least, pretend to be normal, with friends that don't know that if they take off the sunglasses, they could possibly kill the friend they are talking with, or if their friend thinks too loud, hear everything going on in their head. Or if they take off the watch, they'll look like a demon, or they might slide through the floor or...</p><p>The list goes on and on, but, for a few hours everyday....</p><p>They're normal, with normal problems, and normal annoyances and it doesn't all matter.</p><p>For a few hours anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fawn Eyes

There wasn’t much Scott Summers dreaded.

Lena Miller, the fifteen year old _menace_ (and even while thinking it, he felt guilty about it, because Lena _was_ his friend, but he wasn’t exactly in the best mood right now), clasping her hands, and staring up at him pleadingly, widening her eyes, and pouting while saying, “Please, Scotty, please, please, pretty please be my figure for art class?” was one of them.

He stared at her and let out a low sigh. “Why?” he asked.

“I need another figure for art class and I am not doing so well with sunglasses, or glasses of any kind really, so I was hoping I could draw you for practice!” she explained and Scott glared at her.

“No,” he stated.

“But, but…my grade! And if I don’t get glasses down, I’ll _never_ be a good artist! I can’t go my whole artistic _life_ without drawing glasses! Glasses are a part of life, pieces of emotion, and I know you don’t like people pointing out your eye problems, is that why you’re saying no? I’ll make them black! I’ll do the whole picture in black and white and make sure the one I do of Paulie is the one that goes up on the wall!” she pleaded, ignoring Paul’s statement, “When did I _ever_ agree to be a figure for your art class?”

Well, at first.

Lena blinked a bit, as if registering what he was saying, and then turned on Paul. “Well, you did, yesterday. Remember? You said, and I quote, ‘I owe you one Len’ and I was like, ‘cool, can I draw you?’ and you answered, ‘anything.’ I remember, anyway, and I’m holding you to it,” she explained.

“You do not have it in writing. I am not bound to it,” Paul argued.

Lena immediately focused on him and, somehow, her eyes went wider. Scott managed to bite back a groan and Paul’s spine stiffened for all of three seconds before he caved. “All right, all right, I’ll be your figure, just put away the Fawn Eyes!” he exclaimed and she beamed, right before glomping Paul, her curly blacked haired head bashing into his sternum.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You won’t regret this!” she squealed out, ignoring Paul’s winded ‘I already do’ and then released a gasping Paul to turn on Scott.

“No,” Scott reiterated and Lena stared up at him, unleashing her Fawn Eyes on him.

The sad fact of the matter was, Scott was immune.

“No,” he repeated and she huffed before she backed off.

“Okay Scotty,” she responded and he relaxed.

She glanced up at him and opened her mouth as if to say something when the bell rang. “AH! I’m gonna be late!” she shouted and grabbed her wheeling portfolio, carefully making sure that it didn’t hit anyone’s foot before she ran off, dragging it behind her.

Scott just grabbed the rest of his books while Paul massaged his sternum. “Drama, right?” Paul asked and Scott nodded.

Paul threw his arm over Scott’s shoulders and grinned. “Don’t worry about it man! You know Len. She’ll have forgotten, entirely, you saying ‘no’ so cruelly and soul devastatingly by Monday. Or before. Are you going to the football game tonight?” Paul stated as they walked to their class, easily sliding in before the late bell rang.

“Stop trying to make me feel guilty. And I’m not sure yet,” Scott answered as Paul dropped his arm from Scott’s shoulders to sit in his seat while Scott sat in his own.

“I heard that Jean’s going to be taking photos for the school newspaper and the yearbook club,” Paul stated casually.

Scott turned toward him in surprise. “She told me that she wasn’t,” he stated.

“The originally photographer got sick and I’m not allowed to take photos anymore after the tennis match…issue,” Paul responded.

Scott was about to answer when the late bell rang and he immediately focused forward.

Paul grinned and leaned back, before he focused forward, pen poised over paper as their teacher began to take roll.


	2. Saturday Afternoon

Paul watched Lena tie her hair back with a bright red ribbon, somehow not getting her tangled up in it (or if she did, she didn’t show it), and only then did she pull out her very tall board she always used when drawing, a large sheet of paper clipped down and the charcoal loose in her left hand. “Okay, get comfy, because you’re going to be there for a while,” she ordered and Paul sighed before he leaned back against the tree he had chosen and tilted his head back, closing his eyes behind the sunglasses.

It was the only tree in his front yard and it had often featured in whatever picture she was drawing, and rarely for class.

Lena, he had long learned, was obsessed with capturing things on paper, with her own hands. He heard her muttering about ‘pretty purple peacock plumes’, telling him she had messed up, and wondered if it was truly a mistake or one she had just envisioned.

Then there was silence and Paul thought on last night’s football game.

That had been bad, really. That tank exploding without any warning.

Those things were checked often, so how had it happened?

He could sense a cover-up in all of this, but of what?

Shoddy safety practices?

Not likely.

Their coach was insane over protecting Duncan to the point that he would, sometimes, set up a fall guy when Duncan did something a little too far out of bounds. It was that kind of thinking and acting that would, eventually, come back to bite Duncan in the ass, however.

“Am I allowed to talk?” Paul asked.

“Yes. Until I tell you to stop, because I’ll be on your face then,” she answered.

“You hear about the explosion last night?” he asked.

There was the sigh of the wind in the trees and he could hear a soft squeak as Lena dug a little harder then she probably should have with her charcoal, followed by a slight snap. “Yes. I was going to see you today, so I didn’t call last night. I called Scott. Professor Xavier picked up and handed the phone over to Scott. He said it was nothing, but he sounded a little funny, as if something was wrong, so I won’t believe him till I see him on Monday,” she answered.

He didn’t ask how she found out so fast.

It was on the news when he got home, local station, and he had no doubt that was how she heard it as well.

“Why are you asking?” she questioned.

Paul let out a soft sigh. “I feel like something’s being covered up. There is no way that the container would have blown up like that,” he said.

“Maybe it wasn’t checked over as well as it should have been,” Lena pointed out.

Paul nearly shifted his head to give her a ‘really?’ look, but she let out a soft laugh. “No, you’re right, if nothing else, the coach would have personally made sure if only to keep Duncan safe,” she corrected and there was the sound of quick sketches.

The wind had died down.

“So what was it?” Paul questioned.

“I don’t know. But we probably shouldn’t ask too many questions,” Lena responded.

“Why?”

“Because, if it is being covered up, we don’t want to have to _become_ covered up.”

Paul winced and she admonished him with moving.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Paul sat down to dinner with his parents and his mom put lasagna onto the center of the table.

“How was your day Paul?” his dad asked and Paul grinned.

“Pretty good. Scott had to cancel our afternoon hang out, but Lena was pretty happy about it. It gave her time to make me stay still and keep quiet while she was drawing me. For class,” Paul answered and, even with the addition of ‘for class’ his parents were exchanging significant looks.

Looks that told Paul they were going to try and play matchmaker.

He wondered how he was so open-minded when his parents…weren’t.

The one girl he had dated had been Chloe, a black girl.

After one dinner with his parents, she had broken up with him, unable to take his parents subtle jabs and their talking like it wouldn’t last. The most confident girl in school, in Paul’s opinion, spent two hours with his parents and was in tears the minute she stepped outside of the house.

It had pissed Paul off and, since, he had refused to bring anyone he wanted to date near the house, deciding to keep from talking to the one girl he _would_ like to try it with (Taryn) in case it ever got back to his parents and they decided to meddle in his life.

Again.

Scott, in his opinion, had it easy.

As commanding as Professor Xavier was (no inviting friends over without a long standing appointment, a curfew that was far earlier than any other teenagers, and a strict policy on fighting that would put Bayville High to shame), he let Scott live the life he wanted and was pretty lenient otherwise.

He let Scott stay out late if Scott called and asked first (Scott has yet to be told ‘no’ to), and he pretty much kept out of Scott’s life, from what Paul could see.

“Maybe you should invite her over for dinner one night Paul. We’d love to meet this mysterious Lena you speak of so fondly,” his mother stated and Paul managed not to frown.

“She’s just a friend, Mom. And besides, her mom is very strict about dinner rules. Lena always has to be home in time for dinner,” Paul answered, knowing it wasn’t the complete truth.

His parents shared looks, those happy ‘this girl might be good for our son’ looks.

The looks that said that they would be trying to pair him and Lena up while planning the white wedding and gushing over how adorable they were together.

Like with Jenny back in middle school.

And he hadn’t even _liked_ girls back then.

“Well, maybe we should invite Lena and her parents down for dinner sometime. It would be nice to get to know the _friend_ you speak so highly of,” his dad stated.

“We can’t,” Paul answered.

“Oh?” his mom asked and his parents shared nervous glances.

For the first time ever, Paul wished that Lena came from a divorced home. That her mother was a single mom, just trying to get by, and that she was from an emotionally destroyed place.

But, no, of course not.

She was happy, her parents were married, and her parents were deeply in love with each other, even if there was such an age gap between them.

Twelve years specifically.

He knew, because he had seen it, with Scott, when her dad had come home suddenly. The joy the jumped out of both Lena and her mother had been obvious, bubbling over and swirling through the room as they both ran, to where he stood, knocking the man over to hug him.

He had somehow been fine.

“No. Her dad travels often for work. He’s not home often,” Paul explained.

“Oh! Well, just her mother and her then! It would be nice, wouldn’t it John?” his mom questioned and Paul resisted the urge to smack his head against the table.

“Yes it would dear. Paul, could you ask your Lena if she and her mother would be available for Saturday night dinner?” his dad asked.

“Sure,” Paul answered, giving up on ever correcting his parents.

It was pointless.

They wanted their lives, and him, a certain way and damn anyone, including their own son, who got in their way.


End file.
